People: Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, Silvio Berlusconi

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Yes, this was the first year without the late legendary "American Bandstand" host, who started hosting the televised Times Square celebration 40 years ago and made a final brief appearance last year before his death in April at age 82.

This year's version was dubbed "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest" on ABC.

Ryan Seacrest has been hosting the show for eight years, but doing it without Clark is "surreal," he told The Associated Press. Typically, he would be posted outside overlooking Times Square, while Clark, who had suffered a stroke in 2004, made brief appearances from indoors.

"Then, right after midnight, I would run inside and stand next to him, and he always has some funny clever thing to make fun of me about," says Seacrest, 38, speaking in the present tense. "I think I will really miss that moment this year.

"The night will be, as he would want, a celebration of what's to come: Dick was always one to say, 'The show must go on.' "

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Reality TV star Kim Kardashian delivered a baby bombshell herself on New Year's Eve, posting news of her pregnancy -- Kanye West is the father -- on Twitter and telling the Daily News she still planned to host a New Year's Eve party in Las Vegas. It was not clear if the father of her child would make an appearance, although the two have been dating for eight months. West, 35, had already delivered the news Sunday to a crowd of 5,000 at a Las Vegas casino concert in song form: "Now you having my baby." Kardashian confirmed the news a few hours later, posting: "We feel so blessed and lucky and wish that in addition to both of our families, his mom and my dad could be here to celebrate this special time with us."

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Speaking of babies, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's former prime minister and a billionaire media mogul, is robbing the cradle again, announcing Sunday that he is engaged to a Neapolitan woman nearly 50 years his junior, according to the Telegraph.

Berlusconi, 76, announced his engagement to 27-year-old Francesca Pascale on Domenica Live, a popular program on one of the networks in Berlusconi's Mediaset empire, noting that he feels "less lonely" since meeting Ms. Pascale, claiming she has strong family values.

Berlusconi has been working on a political comeback after resigning as head of the Italian government 13 months ago after three terms as prime minister. Critics were quick to call this announcement an image makeover.

His second wife, Veronica Lario, cited his tastes for underage women as one reason for divorcing him in 2008, and he became notorious for sex parties at his Sardinia villa. He's been sentenced to four months in jail for tax evasion and remains on trial for paying a then-17-year-old exotic dancer, Karima el-Mahroug (stage name: Ruby the Heart Stealer), for sex.